Yesterday’s blog post reported how wooden crosses were placed on up to 100 military graves at the Abingdon’s Cemeteries, as an act of remembrance. These include a large number of military graves for crew members based at RAF Abingdon. There are more RAF graves at Our Lady and St Edmund of Abingdon Church.
Near the lodge of the Spring Road Cemetery are a cluster of six RAF graves.
Behind them is a stone cross, of a different design, for Pilot Officer Peter Shennan, of the RAF. Somebody had left poppies there.
On the morning of 5th April 1939 a Fairey Battle, a light single engine bomber, took off from RAF Abingdon for a series of low level bombing practise runs. On the third run, as the aircraft dived to gain speed towards RAF Abingdon, the pilot became aware of something leaving the rear cockpit. Banking to check, the pilot saw a body falling to the ground.
The body of Peter Shennan was found soon afterwards in a field near Dry Sandford. The inquest found that he died of multiple injuries. The inquest also noted that his pilot suit did not have an anchorage point. He came from Wolverhampton and was buried with full military honours. The webpage http://aircrewremembered.com/shennan-peter.html has a fuller account and pictures of the ceremony.
This image of the Fairey Battle, at the RAF Museum London, was posted to Flickr by tataquax at https://www.flickr.com/photos/25451699@N04/6856709971 and is licensed under the terms of the creative commons cc-by-sa-2.0.
There were six ponds in the wetland area. Graham Bateman organised for two to be redug. He reported ‘On Monday morning (19 Oct), two of the Barton Fields ponds, which had become completely overgrown with vigorous Reed Sweet-grass (Glyceria maxima), were rejuvenated. We were ‘loaned’ a digger and driver by Fergal Construction Co Ltd, of Standlake, who have been working on the resurfacing of the Sustrans path running through Barton Fields. Ashley, the digger driver, was a delight to watch as he skilfully removed the top vegetation for stacking, then the roots and bottom mud that were delicately smoothed around the pond edges to allow any ‘creatures’ to return to water. We now have two ‘new’ ponds that would have been lost as manually they could never have been dug out.’ Graham says thankyou to Fergal and Ashley.
Near a pond that was originally made by the Freshwater Trust, Graham has also cleared a 300 sq m plot in the marshy, peaty area during Lock-down in which they have introduced 1000 Snake’s-head Fritillary bulbs and will be introducing other plants next year. This wetland meadow will be mowed each summer. This area also has Snipe.
